rants, raves, line-breaks and staves. the mad journal of a would-be big man in letters.

12.7.06

oh, where are you now . . . .

I awoke to the news of Syd Barrett's death. Both Steph & Big Daddy seemed to think he'd already been dead for some years, but I guess when you go underground you go underground, unless you're Abbie Hoffman ...

... I think I was 17 when a classmate gave me a floppy, plastic 7" record from a copy of her Sassy of Michael Stipe singing Syd's "Dark Globe." That was really my intro to Barrett's music, though like most western teens I'd already been exposed to the more popular (& significantly more pedestrian) stylings of mid-period Pink Floyd. I was really taken aback by the song's abstract yet morbidly heartfelt lyric: Oh, where are you now, pussywillow who smiled on my seed?/When I was alone, you promised a stone from your heart ... I was a wannabe skatepunk goth grunge poet kid or something. Who the hell knows -- it was suburbia at the end of the Reagan yrs. & we were *all* rightly miserable ...

... earlier this evening I told several of my friends, via email, Syd's influence on his one Floyd album & two haphazardly put-together solo lps was greater than that of the rest of the ensuing Pink Floyd collection. Of course it was/is just my opinion. I mean, I am a guitar player, and I know there are a lot of us out there who have fished at David Gilmour's pond, but when you're talking about the visible -- errr -- audible effect one artist has on so many afterwards, I think Syd is right up there with Buddy Holly & Patti Smith & the Minutemen & The Velvet Underground. People who listened to Syd Barrett wrote songs & started bands. Fucking good ones, too.

There's that great old (and now maybe tired) Neil Young line about it being better to burn out than to fade away. Barrett's a bit of an anomaly, since he burned out first and then faded away to rust where none of us could see. His songs remain, & I love them like I did as a teenager, & I suppose that's enough.

About Me

From the mythological land of Youngstown, Ohio ... educated and then loitered around in Bowling Green, Ohio ... played in some bands, worked in politics ... I'm a soul artist. . .a would-be poet/novelist with a rock and roll problem . . .